The root source of our problems and suffering is our fundamental ignorance, our misunderstanding of how we exist as a person and how the world around us exists.
We will begin by discussing this ignorance from the perspective of both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. In particular, we will be looking at how this fundamental ignorance, this self-grasping, leads to our disturbing emotions such as attachment and aversion and how these disturbing emotions then lead to our problems and suffering.
We will then be focussing on how to develop our Vipashyana (insight) practice to overcome this self-grasping. How, according to the Theravada, we develop the wisdom of selflessness (anatman) to overcome a belief in an autonomous self and how, according to the Mahayana, we develop the wisdom of emptiness (shunyata) to overcome the grasping to an independent, inherently existent I.